Chapter 16 Punch Drunk
Punch Drunk
I watched Rhys make his way through the crowd, head and shoulders above the rest, then up the steps to the village hall, passing Tudor, denuded of his Green Man foliage, who was coming out.
I got a paper cup of the still-warm punch, a slice of cake and two large Jumbles, the biscuits shaped like knots, and moved away to the edge of the crowd.
‘There you are!’ said a sweet voice at my elbow and I turned to see Verity and Kate standing there. They must have come out again for the return of the procession – or, in Kate’s case, more food.
‘The others have been here for ages, so when we couldn’t see you we thought you’d had an accident, or got lost!
But you were safely with Rhys all the time!
’ Verity laughed. ‘But perhaps safely isn’t the right word, given his reputation!
I really shouldn’t say that, because I expect you were just discussing books, weren’t you? ’
‘Hardly, since he is a literary author and can’t have anything in common with Ginny on that score,’ Kate said with all the literary snobbishness of her kind.
‘Actually, we have the same publisher, and also, our agents are friends,’ I said defensively. ‘In fact, I first met him years ago at a publisher’s party.’
‘Oh, then I expect that’s why you came to Triskelion,’ suggested Verity.
‘Not at all. I had no idea that Rhys lived here until I arrived and bumped into him.’
‘I can vouch for that,’ said Evie, appearing at my side. ‘I booked her in without telling her and she had no time to check out the website because she was busy packing up her cottage.’
She smiled at me. ‘Are you ready to go back to the house? This wassail is very pleasant, but I need my tot of whisky before I go to bed. Noel’s gone home, so you can help your poor old mother back – come along.’
You couldn’t have found anyone who fitted that description less, and it was she who took my arm in a firm grip and steered me away.
‘Most of the others have gone ahead,’ she told me, pausing to toss our paper cups and plates into a paper sack held by a teenage boy I recognized as the drummer. ‘Nerys took Cariad home almost as soon as we got down. She was a bit tired and overexcited.’
‘I feel much the same way,’ I admitted. ‘Tired but a bit … edgy. And the wassail seems to have made everything go fuzzy at the edges.’
‘It was quite strong,’ Evie agreed and when, as soon as we entered the hall of Triskelion, with its now familiar smell of pine, spices and old, well-loved house, she suggested I go straight up to bed and she would make my excuses to the others, who we could hear talking in the sitting room, I thankfully accepted her offer.
She has her uses, and her thoughtful moments.
My mind was so full of the strange events of the evening – of the things Rhys had told me, and those I had shared with him – that as I climbed into bed I was certain that, despite my exhaustion, I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
There was the persistent heartbeat of the drumming still in my head, too … but that was the last thing I heard before instantly falling fathoms deep into dreamless sleep.
*
I woke up as early as usual next morning and could hear, through the sliver of opened window, a bird singing sweetly in the dark.
I’d have liked to lie there for a little while, thinking about what Rhys had said last night, and about Verity’s innuendoes about him, but there was no time now. I needed to get up and ready.
When I crept downstairs through the silent house, Rhys was waiting for me in the garden hall with Snookums and the black cat, Pompey, in attendance.
I felt rather shy. It had been one thing exchanging confidences with Rhys in the darkness on the hill last night, but a different one to be face to face with him in the cold light of dawn – or the cold light of the wall lamp in the garden hall, anyway, because it was still dark outside.
He, however, seemed quite unaffected, merely gesturing to the animals and saying, ‘I had to let them out of the kitchen, or Snookums would have barked the house down. But he’s too old and lazy to come with us.
He’ll just potter around the garden and then come back in through the cat flap when he’s had enough. ’
Rhys slung a rucksack over one shoulder and opened the outer door on to a crisp, frost-sparkling world.
Snookums shot past us and vanished into the bushes, but Pompey slid silently out after him like a wisp of dark smoke, then twined himself twice around my ankles, before disappearing into the shrubbery after Snookums.
‘You’re honoured!’ said Rhys, sounding astonished. ‘He doesn’t usually take any notice of anyone except Nerys.’
‘He’s a very handsome cat,’ I said, as Rhys led me down a gravelled path through the bushes that bordered the sloping lawn, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
‘I miss my old cat, Mrs Snowboots, terribly.’
‘I like cats and dogs equally and we’ve always had both, ever since I was a little boy.’
‘Have you always lived here?’ I said, finding it easier to talk to his broad back as he led the way down the narrow path.
‘Ever since my parents were killed in an accident, when I was five,’ he said. ‘Nerys and Timon gave me a puppy from a dog rescue centre. That’s where all our dogs come from. Our old labrador cross died last year and we haven’t got round to getting another one yet.’
‘Unless it’s a puppy, I suppose it would be hard to find one that would get on with Snookums and Pompey.’
‘Yes, and Bronwen says she’s beyond house-training a puppy at her time of life.’
‘Mrs Snowboots came from a rescue place, too, but she was elderly when I got her. I’d intended getting a kitten, but when I got there, we just sort of clicked.’
He turned his dark head and I could sense, rather than see, that quirky smile. ‘Just like we did at that publisher’s party! Some things are meant to be and I’m glad fate has thrown us together again, Ginny.’
This was going way too fast for me and I said nothing as he opened a wicket gate and we emerged on to the rough hillocky grass and gorse bushes of the headland, where our path joined the wider one that followed the edge of the cliffs.
It was easier now to see where you were going, for the moon and stars were still out, while dawn was just beginning to lift the edge of the dark sky on the horizon.
As we turned to the right and began to ascend towards Mab’s Grave, silhouetted against the sky, I said, ‘Isn’t this the long way round to the oak wood?’
‘It is, but I thought you’d like to see the place where you can get down to a little cove – which is here,’ he added, showing me where the cliff sloped a little and a path was visible down a gentler slope than the surrounding cliffs.
‘It’s a scramble, but there are wooden rails here and there to help. It’s just a half-moon of pebbles and you can’t get far enough from the path for the sea to cut you off.’
I couldn’t see the beach, but the moon reflected silvery light on to the waves far below and I could hear the shushing noise they made on the shore.
We said nothing more until we arrived at the top, by the Neolithic tomb, by which time my face was frozen from the chilly breeze, while the rest of me, in my warm jeans and anorak, was toasty hot.
‘You can just see the glimmer of the snow-topped mountains across the estuary,’ said Rhys.
‘Yes. They look as if they’ve been covered in runny icing, don’t they?’
It was getting steadily lighter now and I turned to examine the flat stone top of Mab’s Grave more closely. It was lichen-spotted, and ancient cup and ring marks had been gouged out of the surface, some more weathered than others.
Rhys pointed out the triskelion symbols also carved there, which, like the other markings, appeared to have been added over time, and also a strange formation in the surface at the upper end of the great slab, shaped like a star, which he said had given the village its name of Seren Bach – Little Star.
‘The pub in St Melangell is called the Star and Stone,’ he added, ‘but come on, that wind is icy and your nose looks like a cherry!’
‘Glacé or maraschino?’ I asked, and he laughed.
‘More glacé.’
This was not very flattering, but it made me laugh too, and indeed, I was glad to take the more sheltered path downwards, past the dead embers of the bonfire.
‘So, will you get another cat?’ asked Rhys, surprising me by suddenly reverting to our earlier conversation.
‘I mean to, but I need to find a new home first.’
‘Oh, yes, Evie said you’d had to give up your cottage and suggested we help you scour the internet for a new home!’
‘She was joking … I think,’ I said. ‘I have started looking but I haven’t really had the heart for it. But now I’ve moved out of Wisteria Cottage, I really will have to get on with it.’
‘Why did you have to leave your old home?’
I told him about my rural idyll and the end of my Eden, and that everything was now in storage while I decided where to go next.
‘I liked being remote, but maybe Evie is right and I shouldn’t live somewhere quite so cut off.
But I do love the quiet rural life, even if I did slip into being a bit of a recluse during lockdown.
Evie says I have agoraphobia, but I’m not that bad, just out of the habit of mixing with people.
Coming to the retreat was all a bit of a shock to the system. ’
‘I can imagine. Even we had got out of the habit of having lots of people, mostly strangers, in the house. I did get a lot of writing done during lockdown, though, and Nerys worked throughout just as usual: the benefits of working from home. Of course, the pottery reopened as soon as it could and Timon continued his own work in his studio there.’
He paused. Then, as we entered the shadows of the oak wood, he said rather tentatively, ‘What do you think of Triskelion now you’re here?’
‘I love the house. It sort of felt friendly as soon as I arrived, despite being so big. And the setting, with the sea, the sky, the wood and the ancient tomb, is very special.’